


learn to trust again

by thebaldunicorn



Category: Detentionaire (Cartoon)
Genre: After the end of the series, Gen, Lee is not doing well, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, brandy is surprisingly nice, lee and brandy are my brotp okay, minor hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21588640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebaldunicorn/pseuds/thebaldunicorn
Summary: "You look awful." Brandy says as soon as she walks up.No 'how are you', no 'wow I haven't seen you in weeks', no 'how's your life going'. Not even a 'hi'.She doesn't even wait for him to reply, just kicks out a chair opposite him and sits."Thanks, Brandy." Lee says sarcastically. "Good to see you too."Or, Lee and Brandy meet up after the events of the series. Lee is having difficulty trusting now that he knows how many secrets people have kept from him. Luckily, Brandy is someone who always tells it like it is.
Relationships: Friendship - Relationship, background cam/brandy
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	learn to trust again

"You look awful." Brandy says as soon as she walks up.

No ' _how are you_ ', no ' _wow I haven't seen you in weeks_ ', no ' _how's your life going_ '. Not even a 'hi'.

She doesn't even wait for him to reply, just kicks out a chair opposite him and sits.

"Thanks, Brandy." Lee says sarcastically. "Good to see you too."

Brandy crosses her legs and holds her coffee out in front of her like a shield.

"Yeah, kay, don't need the sass. When was the last time you slept?"

"Sometimes when I sneeze my eyes close." He says, only half-joking. "Does that count?"

Brandy raises an eyebrow.

"Check my expression. Does it looks like that counts?"

Lee stares at her. He picks up his cup of coffee, blacker and more espresso-filled than he usually enjoys, and takes a long sip.

Making sense of her aggressive take on friendship is exhausting on a good day - Lee doesn't have it in him to dodge her worry gracefully today. Doesn't have the energy to try and pretend to be normal.

He's too tired.

"So what's new with you, Brandy?" Is all he thinks to say.

Brandy glares at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Um - I don't - drinking coffee?"

"You never want to talk about me."

That's not an unfair accusation.

That doesn't mean it doesn't sting.

"Usually when we talk it's all conspiracies and your friends and detention blah blah blah."

"Usually when we talk you're not all over me asking how I am." Lee shoots back.

Brandy crosses her arms.

"Wow, okay, like I can't be worried about a friend? Do you even know how awful you look? You look like you haven't sleep in a year! And you flinch!"

She points at him then, even though Lee is pretty sure he didn't flinch. Well, maybe he flinched a little.

"You're acting shifty and suspicious and totally paranoid! Hello, no one in the cafe is out to get you! They might call the cops on you maybe, but that's just cause you look like you're contemplating robbing the register!"

"I don't flinch. And I'm not robbing anybody!" He hisses, conscious of his volume and the people at nearby tables.

Lee wouldn't say he's _overly_ conscious of these things, like a paranoid person would be. Just normally aware.

"Whatever. Act creepy if you want to." Brandy says.

"Can we talk about something else?" Lee says, not quite begging.

"Fine. You wanted to talk something real, like my problems? Or something stupid like the weather?"

Lee sighs and lifts a hand to rub his temple. He feels a headache coming on.

"Anything normal is fine."

Brandy laughs, not unkindly, but most assuredly _at_ him.

"I didn't think you could do normal."

Lee doesn't think he can do normal anymore, either. It's really depressing.

He misses it. Misses when people around him were simple, made sense.

When they didn't lie.

"Cam's worried about you," Brandy says next, and it's soft.

Lee doesn't think he's ever heard 'soft' from Brandy. It sounds weird.

"Yeah. I know. How...are you and him doing?'

"Fine. Sorta. You know, I'm - I'm not really popular anymore. All my old friends think I'm this sad loser. And it - it _sucks._ "

He looks at her. Tries not to think about all the other people in the room, the people in his thoughts, all the people who have piles of secrets and may or may not be out to get him.

Brandy looks...sad. She's looked sad for a while and he hasn't had the energy to notice, to talk to her about it.

Lee wonders if he's ever been a good friend at all.

He hasn't talked to anyone - _really_ talked - in what feels like forever.

Maybe he can't relate to missing popularity - he still thinks only hanging out with your one clique is a dumb way to go about life - but he knows what it's like to lose stuff. Stuff you know shouldn't matter, but it really, really does.

"I'm sorry about that." He tells her honestly.

She adjusts her pink sunglasses, not quite looking at him.

"Cam's been - seriously supportive through it all. Like, I didn't expect it, but he's been great. Really, really amazing. It sucks, but things - aren't _all_ bad."

Lee coughs away a laugh.

She sounds so aggressive even when she's being positive - it's actually pretty funny.

"Cam's a good guy." He smiles instead.

A thought pops into his head, and Lee is blurting it out before thinking that he's moving the topic back to him and his problems again.

( _Selfish_ , a part of him whispers again, he's always been _so damn selfish_ )

  
  


"Do you have siblings, Brandy?"

She takes a sip of her coffee and eyes him over it. It feels like a predator evaluating, determining prey from a threat.

"I have two little half sisters." She says eventually. "They're okay."

"And you - do you get along with them? Do you like each other?"

"I don't _like_ them." She sounds offended at the implication. "They hate pink. And I hate brats that sneeze in my face cause they think it's so funny. But they're family and we love each other. It's like.."

She pauses.

"Like you and your mum, right? You don't always get each other, you almost never agree with each other, but you like, for _sure_ love each other."

"I thought it was different with siblings." Lee says. "Like...I dunno. Nicer, maybe."

What he means is he thought there was supposed to be trust, at the very least - but that's not something he has with any of his family, not anymore.

He loves his mom and his dad. He would be devastated if anything happened to them, and he would do terrible things to keep them safe but -

_But_ -

He can't trust them to tell him the truth anymore. Dad had his reasons, maybe, and Mom was a clone for a bit.

Even so, to this day, he knows there's fistfuls of stories and memories they will never tell him, never deem him old enough or worthy enough to finally hear.

And that...that would strain any relationship, right? Even parent and child?

How much more strained would a relationship be if there was no affection, no love _at all_ to mend the gap between that mistrust?

"Why do you suddenly care about my little sisters, Ping?" Brandy asks slowly. "Is this some new conspiracy, because I can guarantee you they aren't part of it, they don't have the brains; they can't even accept that jean jackets were _so_ five years ago."

"No, no, that wasn't -" He tries to reassure her. "I was just...look, did Cam tell you about - about the Serpent?"

Brandy blinks at him three times in a row, surprised.

"Oh." She says. "That he's your brother?"

That still feels wrong to hear. Lee has been an only child all his life - except he hasn't, he's younger, he's _always_ had an older brother, he just never knew about it - and to be reminded his surprise sibling is a sort of enemy feels like swallowing a rock, like a bad memory lingering in his mind. Like a cold chill he can't get rid of running down his spine.

He almost wishes he could unlearn that truth.

( _Almost_ , because there is a desperate need inside Lee to always learn more, to always dig deeper, so next time he can be smarter, faster, more well informed and he can be _better_ and he can help those he cares about, he can _win_ this time, he _can_ -)

Lee closes tired eyes for a moment.

"I don't even know his real name. I don't really know...anyone in my family."

He opens his eyes to find Brandy toying with an empty sugar packet he'd left on the table.

"You could, like, ask him." She suggests. Like it's that easy. "Or ask your mom. She had to have something picked out when he was born, right?"

Lee chokes down a bitter laugh.

"I don't think they'd tell me." He bites his lip, and then, weary and alone and hating every moment of it, admits,

"I don't know if I could trust anything they did tell me."

Brandy rolls her eyes again and that hurts.

"And you said you weren't paranoid." She mutters to herself.

"Look, Lee Ping, I get it. Conspiracies are your deal, or whatever, and you've found so many of them that you're seeing them everywhere. You don't know who you can trust anymore. People lie to your face and they talk about you behind your back. You don't get to know who's doing what, who's friend or foe. I've been there."

Lee finds that to be an oversimplification of what he's been through, but she glares when he opens his mouth to correct her.

Oh, she's not done then.

"You'll have to learn to trust again eventually. People can't live all on their own - what about when you need to visit a doctor, and hope they'll take care of you? What about the police? What about your friends? What about the barista that like, made your coffee? You had to trust she wasn't going to poison it, right?"

Brandy has a point. There's a million ways he trusts people every day not to harm him, not to lie.

But those aren't the people who've repeatedly lied to him. Those aren't the people whom he has reason to doubt.

He tells her this.

She twists perfectly pink lips to the side.

"Then you move on to more trustworthy people," She tells him, "Or you trust them with just the little stuff. But Lee, you know you still have, like, good friends? Who don't lie to you. Who would never in a _million_ years betray you."

Lee is, in fact, beginning to realize that.

"Holger, for example." She says with a smile. It's crooked, pulling more to the right, and that's how he knows it's real. "You don't think that dork is even capable of lying, do you?"

Lee finds that he's smiling too.

"No."

"And your big nerd friend with the dumb hat -"

Lee knows she knows Biffy's name, she's just pretending not to.

"- He'd risk his life to save you, right? I bet he could find you a name for your brother. And you'd believe him."

"...I would."

"And Cam -"

"Cam's great."

Her smile has something different tinged to it now, something warm and bright and fond and maybe a little bit defensive as she thinks about Cam.

"And I guess, you know, whenever I'm not busy, you have me too. I might exaggerate stuff but you _know_ I'll tell you like it is."

She really will.

"Thanks, Brandy." He says sincerely.

He does trust his friends. Much more than his family right now.

  
  


"Is it weird if I say that I'm glad our horrible attempt at dating crashed and burned?" He asks. "Because I'm really, really glad we're friends now."

She looks torn between being offended (he knows she doesn't even like him that way anymore, she just dislikes it when someone implies she's not _everyone's_ type) and being pleased.

"You were a terrible boyfriend." She remarks as she wafts between the two emotions for a moment.

"I mean, I didn't even _want_ to be in the first place -"

"But thank you. I am a good friend."

  
  


He sips at his coffee and finds himself relaxing, bit by bit. Tense limbs go loose and he stops flinching so much every time the door to the cafe opens.

He isn't safe. Or at least, no safer here than anywhere else.

His family is still a mess, and a lying one at that.

But he does have his friends. He has trust for them, at least.

And he has this moment to catch up with Brandy, whose biggest secret is one he already knows.

( _She's actually a really good person and a really good friend_ )

Lee's problems are not ones that can be fixed over coffee.

Something wretched in him smooths over anyway, just at her words.

"Thanks for this, Brandy." He says softly.

"Don't mention it. Seriously, don't."

He smiles.

For a beautiful moment, here and now, life doesn't hurt at all.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I had a lot of feelings about Detentionaire (I wish it had another season!! Ahh!!) and this fic is what happened. If it is not one hundred percent true to canon, don't tell me. I just wanted Brandy and Lee to sit down and chat about all the crazy things happening in their lives. Also I know Brandy doesn't have sisters in canon, but she does now for the purposes of this fic. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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